American Gladiators - Shout! Factory Challenges all Comers with a DVD Release of the Original Series

First season of the classic show to get a 3-disc release this summer!

Posted by David Lambert

3/18/2009

The only American Gladiators DVD we've ever seen was a workout video late last year, tied to NBC's re-launching of the classic series from the '80s/90s; we've never gotten episodes of the original program that started out with warriors such as Zap, Blaze, Nitro and Laser. Well, you'll see all those first-season Gladiators, and others, when Shout! Factory brings you their July 14th DVD release of American Gladiators - The Original Series: The Battle Begins.

The '80s cult classic American Gladiators was actually a forerunner of the reality show: a physical competition series in which two male and two female contestants pitted their strength, speed and skill against highly trained pro athletes Gemini, Zap, Nitro, Lace, Malibu and Sunny, aka the American Gladiators. This 3-DVD set covers Season One, including the mid-season wrap-up episode and the subsequent 13 episodes leading up to the finals.

That's part of the information provided this morning by Shout!'s distributor, Vivendi Entertainment, to retailers. So on this 3-disc collection you'll get all 26 episodes, including the mid-season recap in the thirteenth episode. In case you forget, the hosts were NFL stars Joe Theismann and Mike Adamle for the first half of the season, with the arena taking it's decorating cue from the show's title: it looked rather Roman. By the second half of the year, Adamle's co-host, Theismann, had departed (Adamle would later get other co-hosts), and the arena had been made over to the more traditional look that everyone remembers so well.

Video will be full-frame, audio in English and the running time is 840 minutes. Shout!'s info to retailers indicates that they hope to include Brand-New Interviews with the Gladiators as part of the bonus material on this set, but that hasn't been finalized just yet. Nor has package art, but we'll update you on these things just as soon as we can. Stay tuned!